“For with stammering lips and another tongue will he speak to this people. To whom he said, This is the rest wherewith ye may cause the weary to rest; and this is the refreshing: yet they would not hear.”
The Rest
This closes the first movement with a sobering acknowledgment, this is the rest, this is the refreshing, yet they would not hear, worth holding as honest naming that rest, even when genuinely offered, is sometimes genuinely refused, not always circumstantially unavailable but actually resisted.
This is worth examining against however much your own inability to rest has felt purely circumstantial, rather than this verse’s own honest possibility, rest actually offered and yet, honestly, actively resisted, worth considering if this has characterized your own relationship to rest.
This closes the loop this whole first movement has traced. Rest commanded, God’s own precedent, Jesus’s instruction to come apart, strategic busyness, sleepless nights, vain extremes, doubtful mind, honest limits to striving, labour’s own boundedness, and now, rest sometimes genuinely refused.
As this movement closes, examine honestly whether rest has been unavailable to you, or whether, like this verse’s audience, it has actually been offered, and you, honestly, have not yet been willing to hear it, worth carrying into this book’s second movement.
Practice Rest
- Consider honestly whether rest has been unavailable to you, or genuinely offered and resisted.
- Examine this whole first movement’s honest naming as necessary before genuine rest can actually follow.
- Carry this honest question forward into this week’s exploration of what genuine rest actually is.
Prayer
Lord, this is the rest, this is the refreshing. Let me actually hear it today, not among those who, though genuinely offered rest, honestly would not receive it. Amen.
Carry this today
Rest is sometimes genuinely offered and yet, honestly, actively refused, not merely unavailable.